Cadillac Cts 61k Mi on 2040-cars

Auto blog

GM struggles to sell small cars, plans to lay off 2,084 employees at two plants

Due to low demand for some of its vehicles, General Motors plans to cut 2,084 jobs at its assembly plants in Lordstown, OH and Lansing, MI. At the same time, the automaker also announced plans to invest approximately $900 million in three of its facilities – the Toledo Transmission Operations in Ohio, Bedford Casting Operations in Indiana, and Lansing Grand River in Michigan - for future products. GM will discontinue the third shift at both the Lansing Grand River plant and the Lordstown, OH plant. The Cadillac ATS, Cadillac CTS, and Chevrolet Camaro are made at the automaker's plant in Michigan, which currently has 2,700 employees. The move to eliminate the third shift affects 810 hourly workers, as well as 29 salaried employees, starting on January 16th. The plant in Lordstown, OH currently has 4,500 employees and makes the Chevrolet Cruze sedan. The plan to discontinue the third shift will affect 43 salaried workers and 1,202 hourly employees and will start on January 23rd. As Fortune points out, sales of the Cruze are down 20 percent through October, while sales of the Cadillac ATS and CTS were down 17 percent through the same period of time. In addition to cutting the third shift at both assembly plants, the automaker plans to invest a total of $900 million between three of its facilities for unnamed future products. GM's Toledo Transmission Operations will receive $667.6 million, the Lansing Grand River Assembly plant will receive $211 million, and the automaker's Bedford Casting Operations will get $37 million. Last year, GM cut roughly 500 jobs from its Orion Township factory due to slow sales of the Chevrolet Sonic and Buick Verano, with surging crossover and SUV sales as the most likely culprit. With GM posting much healthier sales figures for the Chevrolet Equinox and Cadillac XT5 compared to the ATS, CTS, and Cruze, it looks like compact SUVs are to blame for this year's layoffs as well. Related Video: News Source: Fortune, General MotorsImage Credit: REUTERS / Rebecca Cook Hirings/Firings/Layoffs Plants/Manufacturing Cadillac Chevrolet GM Coupe Sedan Lordstown Ohio

Junkyard Gem: 1997 Cadillac Catera

GM's Cadillac Division was having a tough time in the early 1990s, with an onslaught of Lexuses and Infinitis pouring across the Pacific to steal their younger customers while high-end German manufacturers picked off their older customers. Flying an S-Class-priced model between assembly lines in Turin and Hamtramck hadn't worked out, so why not look to the European outposts of the far-flung GM Empire for the next Cadillac? That's how the Catera was born, and I have found a rare first-year example in a North Carolina car graveyard. Across the Atlantic, GM's Opel and Vauxhall were doing good business with prosperous European car buyers by selling them the sleek rear-wheel-drive Omega B (whose platform also lived beneath the Holden VT Commodore in Australia). Here was a genuine German design that competed with success against BMW and Audi on their home turf! So, the Omega B was Americanized and renamed the Catera. Opel wasn't a completely unknown brand to Americans at the time, since its cars were sold here with their own badging through Buick dealerships from the middle 1950s through the late 1970s (for a much shorter period, American Pontiac dealers attempted to sell Vauxhalls). Even after that, plenty of Opel DNA showed up in the products of U.S.-market GM divisions. The Catera was by far the most affordable Cadillac for 1997, with an MSRP starting at $29,995 (about $59,113 in 2024 dollars). Being a genuine German car, it looked much more convincingly European than the DeVille ($36,995), Eldorado ($37,995) and Seville ($39,995). Inspired by the ducks on the Cadillac emblem (they were really supposed to be martlets, mythical birds with no feet and occasionally lacking beaks), Cadillac's marketers went after youthful car shoppers with a whimsical animated duck named Ziggy. For the 21st century, the birds were removed from the Cadillac emblem in order to attract California buyers under 45 years of age. As we all know, the Catera flopped hard in the marketplace. What sold well in Europe turned out not to translate so well in in North America, especially when bearing the badges of such a historically prestigious brand. The Catera's engine was a 54-degree 3.0-liter V6 rated at 200 horsepower and 192 pound-feet. Just as had been the case with its predecessor, the Allante, no manual transmission was available.

Cadillac XT5, XT6, GMC Acadia recalled for two issues

General Motors is recalling three model years of the Cadillac XT5 and XT6, and the Cadillac's GMC sibling, the Acadia. The first recall has to do with the rearview camera. On 2020- and 2021-model-year XT5s, XT6s, and Acadias optioned with Surround Vision, insufficient crimping for the coaxial cables could cause a degraded signal from the rear camera, or cause the signal to fail. With all passenger vehicles required to have a working rearview camera, that's not an ideal situation. Only crossovers with Surround Vision are affected. The population at issue counts 95,231 vehicles, build dates being: XT5s produced from May 1, 2019 to June 23, 2021 XT6s built from February 25, 2019 to June 24, 2021 Acadias built from May 6, 2019 to June 24, 2021  The automaker hasn't been informed of any crashes or injuries related to the problem, and will begin mailing letters notifying owners of the issue on November 7. The fix is a trip to the dealer to have the cables inspected and replaced if necessary. Concerned customers can contact Cadillac customer service at 800-458-8006 or GMC customer service at 1-800-462-8782, then refer to GM's recall number, N222378380. Alternatively, they can get in touch with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Safety Hotline at 888-327-4236 (TTY 800-424-9153), or go to www.nhtsa.gov, and refer to campaign number 22V709000. Another recall concerns just the 2023 Cadillac XT5 and XT6 and 2023 GMC Acadia units that were built on August 9, 2022. That day, a printer in the Spring Hill, Tennessee, Assembly Plant malfunctioned, producing vehicle labels for the driver's side B-pillar with illegible tire size information. That's a violation of a subsection of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 110. Only 24 units are affected, the fix being a jaunt to the dealer for a label with readable information. Owners who don't want to wait until November for letters from GM can contact Cadillac customer service at 800-458-8006 or GMC customer service at 800-462-8782, and mention recall number N222381690. Or they can head to the NHTSA Safety Hotline at 888-327-4236 (TTY 800-424-9153), or www.nhtsa.gov, and refer to campaign number 22V708000.